uii^^ft ??;■".: if ' •/• 




o 



.^ 



\' 




> 







4 o 



^^. 















.■iP 






VALLEY TOWNS OF 
CONNECTICUT. 



MARTHA KRUG GENTHE. 

Hartford, Conn. 



reprinted from 

Bulletin of thE American Geographical Society, 

Vol. XXXIX, September, 1907. 



cm 

Author 
(Person) 

9' N -07 



VALLEY TOWNS OF CONNECTICUT. 



BY 



MARTHA KRUG GENTHE, 

Hartford, Conn. 



The surface of Connecticut may be said to repeat, to a certain 
degree, the surface features of the country at large on a smaller 
scale •.' a wide valley with the main river in the centre, and mountain 
ranges in the east and west. But unlike its larger counterpart, the 
Constitution State offers the strange case of a river and valley not 
continuing partnership to the end ; below Middletown, the Connecti- 
cut Valley continues southwest towards New Haven, while the Con- 
necticut River intersects the crystalline upland, forming a narrow 
gorge, through which it winds its solitary way southeast toward Old 
Saybrook. Thus it happens that the largest river of New England 
has been of almost no importance for the development of the country 
in that part of its course in which other rivers have been most impor- 
tant for the same — namely, in its lower course. It is, perhaps, the 
only river of its size which has not at its mouth a seaport propor- 
tionate in commercial importance to that of the country which it 
drains. If Hartford may be called the St. Louis of the Connecticut 
River, it is in vain that we look for its New Orleans. The functions 
of that port are divided between New Haven, which controls the 
entrance to the Valley but has no river, and Saybrook, which controls 
the mouth of the River but has no valley. This anomaly is one of 
the principal causes why, in Connecticut, the settlement of the country 
never proceeded to any extent upstream from the mouth of the river. 
The Saybrook Plantations never made any acquisition of territory 
upstream, but remained a pure trading colony under a royal patent 
similar to the Dutch colonies, until the Valley towns, realizing the 
importance of a complete control of their waterway, acquired that 



2 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

territory by purchase; and for the same reason the commercial 
aspirations of New Haven suffered cruel disappointments until the 
means of modern traffic opened up for it a direct communication 
with the hinterland. 

The term Connecticut Valley, as used in this paper, is, then, under- 
stood to be distinctly different from the valley of the Connecticut 
River proper. It applies to the topographical and geological unit 
represented by the area of Triassic sandstones and traps which 
extends from the Massachusetts-Vermont line to the Sound as a 
lowland of varying width, but coincides with the valley of the present 
river only as far as Middletown. This configuration of the country 
explains the distribution of the people. The founders of the 'Towns 
upon the River" (Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield) and of 
Springfield, Mass., came from Massachusetts Bay. The voyage 
thence round storm-beaten Cape Cod was so perilous, and the season 
for navigating up the river on which ships might freeze in during five 
months out of twelve was so short, that, in spite of the dangers of the 
wilderness, almost all travel and traffic between the mother and 
daughter colonies was by land. As a highway to the ocean, on the 
other hand, the river was of little value to those early settlers who 
had come, not for commercial purposes, but in search of homes. 
Consequently these towns, in spite of their location on a splendid 
waterway, grew up as a distinct inland colony whose area was co- 
extensive with the cultivable land in the Connecticut Valley, and the 
connection of this outpost of civilization with the world outside was, 
not by what would appear the natural way, the river, but eastward 
overland. Neither the country nor the settlements on the Sound 
were as yet of any practical interest to them. 

New Haven, in her turn, had just as little desire or need to estab- 
lish a connection with the River Colony. The two had nothing in 
common but their strong love of independence, which only intensified 
the eft'ects of the existing geographical barriers. The founders of 
New Haven had strong commercial interests. Coming directly from 
England, the shore was the natural location for a first settlement, 
because it offered them the best facilities for trade with, and eventual 
return to, the mother country. They looked and travelled eastward 
across the ocean, not northward toward their sister colony. More- 
over, between them and the latter there extended many miles of low, 
swampy country which did not invite settlement or traffic, and not 
until the growth of New York and Boston required a regular con- 
nection between the two great ports was there any need of establish- 
ing roads through this region. Thus the two colonies grew farther 



Valley To7vus of Connecticut. 3 

and farther apart during tlic first decades of their existence, and New 
Haven might form another Rhode Island by itself to this day hacf 
not the necessity of seeking aUies against a common foe brought them 
together at a comparatively early date. 

In studying, first, the colony on the River, we must not limit our- 
selves to the towns south of the present State line. This line cuts 
through both a geographical unit and a unit of settlement. Spring- 
field, Windsor, Hartford, and Wcthersfield were settled under the 
same conditions, by the same set of pioneers from the same mother 
colonies, before any political boundaries had been drawn in this 
vicinity. All four of them were founded, as the settlers believed, 
under Massachusetts jurisdiction; all four extended over, and 
adapted their configuration to, the Valley lowland ; all four of 
them convened at Hartford, until an arbitrary line drawn by one 
who had never set his foot on Connecticut soil separated what 
belonged together by law of nature. The course of the State line 
was therefore an object of controversy for many years, and the 
present line still shows visible traces of it. Connecticut ultimately 
regained at least part of the Springfield territory — viz., the present 
towns of Enfield (End-field) and Suffield (South-field). But the 
consequences of the unnatural separation are still felt, especially in 
regard to the important problems of river navigation, where State 
jealousies have always been the greatest obstacles to radical improve- 
ments required by tJie best interests of both Commonwealths : an 
instructive example of how far man is from being helplessly depend- 
ent on his geographical environment ; the most favourable conditions 
will be of no use to him unless he knows how to avail himself of 
them, just as well as it is possible for him to assert himself in spite 
of unfavourable ones. 

This divergence of the actually existing conditions from the geo- 
graphic postulates, which always forms one of the greatest charms of 
anthropogeographic investigation, gives a special flavour to the politi- 
cal geography of America, for it is more pronounced here than in any 
country of the Old World. While in the latter we observe man 
emerging slowly and gradually from the state of slave to that of 
master of geographic conditions, America ofifers the unique spectacle 
of a race of masters who, suddenly and without any transition, 
supplant a primitive race of slaves of nature, a top layer, so to speak, 
being superimposed upon a bottom layer, with a wide gap between. 
This master race, this top layer, brings to the new soil the results of 
the training of centuries on the old ; it applies and tests them on con- 
ditions under which they never worked before. We must, therefore, 



4 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

expect to obtain results often quite different from what we would 
conjecture in Old- World anthropogeography, and, where the results 
are alike, it will be a strong argument in favour of the postulates. 

The Connecticut Valley is a very thankful object for such studies. 
It is really a double valley, being divided into two unequal parts by 
the chain of trap ridges which extends from New Haven to Holyoke 
and beyond. The valley east of the ridges has the present river ; it 
will therefore be designated by the name of River Valley. The 
valley west of the ridges has at present no connected watercourse ; 
its line of lowest depression is divided up among several smaller 
watercourses running in different directions but leading practically 
nowhere. According to its drainage it may be divided into two 
parts in its turn : the northern part, generally speaking, drains into 
the Connecticut by way of the Farmington River, and its southern 
limit is, approximately, the town of Cheshire; we shall designate it 
as the Farmington Valley. The southern part drains into the Sound 
by various small rivers converging more or less toward New Haven, 
and it will be called the New Haven Valley (Fig. I). 

This natural division into an eastern, or River Valley, western, or 
Farmington Valley, and southern, or New Haven Valley, we shall 
find repeated in the political history of the Valley settlements. 

The first colony took its origin in the River Valley. The four 
towns which belonged to it — Springfield, Windsor, Hartford, and 
Wethersfield — grew up as products of the topography left by the 
work of the Springfield Lake and the rivers succeeding it. What 
opportunities did this region offer to the founders of the towns? 
There was a large river in the middle of it, bordered on either side 
by alluvial meadows ; beyond them the country rose in echeloned 
terraces of clay or sand ; beyond these, on either side, rose a more or 
less steep escarpment covered with forest, the "wilderness" in which 
unknown dangers were lurking. The river offered fish and a con- 
venient way of travel between the settlements on its banks ; the 
meadows, arable land for fields and pasture for the cattle ; the 
terraces, desirable sites for houses in the vicinity of the former and 
yet out of immediate danger from the freshets ; the wilderness was 
a region to be avoided. Consequently, the borders of the wilderness 
were selected for the east and west lines of the towns ; at right angles 
to them, with the River in the centre, the north and south lines were 
drawn, so that each community might have an equal share of the 
respective advantages of the different parts of the Valley, and so the 
four original towns came into existence as four strips of land, of 
approximately equal shape, lying north and south of each other on 



Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 



both sides of the River, Hke so many pearls on a string (Fig. II). 
It is very significant, and ought to be mentioned here with due 




in.. 1. — PHVSlOciUArillC DIVISIONS, CONNKCIICLT VALl.E^•. 
111 K:1\ liK \ ALLEV. = NEW HAVEN VALLEY. \\\ FARMINOTON VALLEY. 

em])hasis in regard to general anthropogeographic discussion, that 
the thought of choosing the river lor a boundary between the towns 



6 



Valley Tozcjts of Connecticut. 



does not seem to have ever entered the minds of the settlers. There 
is no trace of even a suggestion to that effect in the reports on the 




FIG. II.-ORIGINAL TEKRITORIES OF THE FOUR VALLEY TOW•^ 



work of the boundary commissioners. They seem to have instinc- 
tively acted m accordance witii the law that mountains, not rivers. 



Valley Tozvns of Coiniecticnt. 7 

especially not the large navigable rivers, are the natural boundaries 
of the expansion of man.* The large river is an artery of life for 
the country through which it flows; the similarity of the country on 
its banks creates a community rather than a diversity of interests 
between the occupants thereof, to say nothing of the interests repre- 
sented in the river itself : navigation, fisheries, etc., which are com- 
mon to the inhabitants of both shores. ]\Ioreover, a large river is a 
surface rather than a line, and for this reason alone would be ill 
fitted for the function of a boundary, since the layout of the line 
along the talzvcg is subject to constant change. The Franco-German 
boundary along the Rhine was an anomaly, due to ungeographic 
political influences, and so are other similar boundaries, unless the 
nature of the river itself makes it an obstruction to, instead of a 
means of, traffic. On the Connecticut River, where none of those 
unnatural conditions were encountered, the geographical law could 
assert itself to its fullest extent, and thus we find that every town 
on this river, not excepting those farther down in the gorge, origi- 
nally included the land on both sides of the same.f 

With small streams and brooks the case is different. They often 
are, in fact, nothing but a wet line in the country, and for this reason 
were, here as well as elsewhere, quite frequently chosen as con- 
venient lines of demarcation between the settlements. Beaver 
Brook and Pewter Pott Brook are mentioned among the early 
boundaries of Wethersfield ; the same is true of Roaring Brook in 
Glastonbury ; of Kettle Brook in Windsor ; of Podunck and Pewter 
Pott River in East Hartford; of Longmeadow Brook, Freshwater 
River, and Saltonstall Brook in Enfield; of Three Alile Brook in 
Suffield, etc.:]: 

Between the small brooks which separated, and the large River 

* A striking example of the barrier effect of mountain ranges, of a more local character, is given by 
the town of Ne wington. Although this town was settled as a colony of Wethersfield, and all its leading 
families are descendants from the old aristocracy of Wethersfield, there is almost no connection, mate- 
rial or immaterial, between the two towns, on account of " the Mountain " (Newington or Cedar Mt.), 
which extends between them (Fig. III). Owing to the particular configuration of the Connecticut trap 
ranges (gentle slopes on the east, abrupt descents on the west side), it was easy enough for the colo- 
nists from Wethersfield to go beyond the range westward ; but for the Newingtonians the way east up 
the steep ascent on their side of the range was too much hardship to be made more often than was 
absolutely necessary, and as soon, therefore, as the territory of New Britain and Berlin was developed, 
the life and business of the town followed the line of least resistance downhill, so that all its vital 
interests are now connected with those two towns which originally were quite alien to it. — (Private 
communication.) 

+ Cfr. likewise the grouping of the states above each other on both banks of the Nile, and, as an 
illustration of the penalties paid by man for the violation of geographical laws, the inconveniences 
arising from the fact that, at the mouth of the Hudson, the two banks belong politically to two different 
States. 

i Cfr. Ratzel, Anthropogeographie I, 2d. edition, p. 350 : " On the lower Zambesi, Livingstone 
found the territories of the smaller chiefs bounded by the small rivers, while the mighty Ma Kololo, and 
after their extermination, their language, spread on both sides of the main river." 



8 Valley Toivns of Connecticut. 

which connected, the settlements, the medium-sized tributaries of 
the latter fulfilled a function of their own : they determined the loca- 
tion of the centres of settlement. The peninsula formed at the 
mouth of a side stream and the main river offers, if the former is of 
sufficient size, a strong position for defense, than which no better 
could be found in those days of constant danger from Indian attacks. 
In every case, therefore, with, the only exception of Wethersfield, 
where the Indians at first were friendly to the settlers, the settlement 
of the territory between the two wildernesses started from such a 
peninsula. The classical example is the mouth of the Park River, 



E.Hfd. 







FIG. in. — THE TO:'OGUAPHV OF NEWINGTON, CONN. THE HEAVV BLACK LINE INDICATES THE 
OKKilNAL TtRRlTORV OF WETHERSFIELD. 

where the Dutch planted the first habitation of the white man that 
was ever built in this region, the Fort of Gode Hope; and the 
English founders of Hartford, finding the best location already taken, 
thought even the second best superior to all others, and began to 
build their houses a little farther upstream, but still on peninsular 
ground (Fig. IV). The Palisado of Windsor, the nucleus of the 
later town, likewise was erected at the junction of the Farmington 
and Connecticut Rivers (Fig. V), Springfield was founded at the 
mouth of the Agawam, from which site only the flooding of the very 
low delta caused the settlers to move to the higher bank opposite ; in 



Valley Tozvus of Connecticut. 9 

East Windsor, the first houses stood near the mouth of the Scantic, 
and in East Hartford near that of the Hockanuni River ; the begin- 
nings of Middletown, in later years, started from the mouth of the 
Alattabesett. The similarity of the geographic function of these 




FIG. IV.— HARTFORD, CONN. THE BLACK LINE SHOWS THE RECTANGULAR BLOCKS IN THE OLD 
AND THE DIVERGING AVENUES IN THE NEW, PARTS OF THE CITV. ' 

rivers is strikingly expressed in the similarity of their names : in each 
town the tributary appears on the records as the "Little River," in 
opposition to "The" River, which means the Connecticut — a charac- 



10 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

teristic illustration of the supreme importance of the latter, whose 
unique relation to the settlements needed no epithet to distinguish 
it from others. 

In proportion as the need for immediate protection decreased, the 
Little Rivers assumed new functions. Being large enough to support 
a limited traffic, they became influential as secondary waterways in 
directing the progress of exploration and expansion of the settle- 
ments toward the wilderness"* (Fig- V). Along their banks the later 
pioneers moved mountainward, and they were repaid by the discovery 
of beavers whose skins they could trade, and by the possibilities for 
industrial pursuits which the water-power of the Little Rivers 
afforded. Sawmills, gristmills, and similar industrial plants sprang 
now up along these banks, and what used to be the Little River of a 
town soon had this name changed to the now more appropriate one 
of Mill River. This name has survived in many instances to this 
day, even after steam and electricity have to a large extent replaced 
the original water-power plants. The objectionable features, how- 
ever, of a location on a more or less shallow stream made serviceable 
to human interests have increased with the increase of the population 
and of the industries themselves, so that in most cases the Mill 
Rivers of the present are indicative of parts of the town whose 
aspects can be pardoned only by studying the present in the light of 
the past. The popular name of Hog River for Hartford's Little 
River is significant. Hartford, on the other hand, has been very 
successful in rescuing at least part of it from the curse of outliving 
a once glorious mission, and her Little River now well deserves 
the appellation of Park River, by which the youngest generation has 
come to know it. 

The distribution of the town lands among the settlers which 
determined the characteristic features of the layout of the towns for 
ever after was similarly influenced by geographical facts. It was 
based on these two considerations : each proprietor must have access 
to the river, and each must also receive an equal share of the fertile 
but unhealthy meadow, and the less productive but safer and 
healthier "upland," as the terrace was then called. The land on the 
banks of the River was therefore divided up into narrow tiers, 
strips of land running east and west from the River, and the occu- 
pants built their houses on the bluff of the "meadow hill" (=first 
river terrace), where they were within easy access to their fields and 
yet out of danger from freshets. This arrangement of the houses 
in its turn determined that of the streets and highways. In the 

* Cfr. Ratzel, Anthropogeograpliie I, No. 154: die Flusse als Wege. 



Valley Toivns of Connecticut. 



11 



earliest days of the colony, when through-trafific could hardly be 
spoken of, the main function of roads was to connect houses. The 




no. \. — WINliSOK, CONN. THE KELATION Ol' HOLSE LOTS TO .MEADOW AND TERKACE. 

latter being arranged as they were, a street connecting them could 
not but run more or less north-southward and generally parallel to 



12 



Valley To7inis of Connecticut. 



the River; and this is exactly what the main streets of the valley 
towns did and still do. Later, when the country farther inland was 
parcelled out, this mode of distribution had become an established 
custom : another tier of narrow strips of land succeeded the first 
on the second terrace, with another street parallel to the first and 
to the River, and so forth until the plateau back of the highest 
terrace was reached (Fig. V, VI). By this time the settlers seem to 
have had enough of this enforced submission to the whims of topo- 
graphy, for on the plateau we find the streets laid out in all possible 
ways and intersecting each other at any imaginable angle. The 
maps of the present River towns offer, therefore, an arrangement 
of their streets which is almost the direct reverse of that of other 
cities. Their old quarters have long parallel thoroughfares cut up 




-SERIES OF TIEKS IN WETHEKSEIELD, CONK. 



into more or less rectangular blocks by short side streets, while the 
new residence districts are characterized by a striking irregularity in 
the arrangement of their thoroughfares — a circumstance which cer- 
tainly has much to do with their picturesqueness (Fig. IV). 

In the early days the progress of settlement was more rapid on 
the western than on the eastern bank, because the latter was mostly 
open meadow land and the former more wooded. The lands on the 
east bank were, therefore, at first utilized for pastures only, and are 
often distinguished as "Farms" from the town proper: Windsor 
Farms or East Windsor, Naubuck Farms or East Wethersfield, and 
the like. By and by, however, what people called over-population 
in those days obliged them to extend the settlement to these less 
attractive parts of their territory. The topography of both banks 



Valley Tozv>is of Connecticut. 13 

being the same, the established method of land distribution was ap- 
plied again ; but in the meantime the colonists had learned in their old 
homes that the first terrace was, after all, somewhat too near the 
water to insure perfect safety from its dangers, and therefore, the 
pioneers on this bank started settlement from the second terrace. 
The first street, consequently, runs on the second instead of the first 
terrace on the east side. It also diflfers from the main street on the 
west side by its being very wide and straight; for at the time when 
it was laid out through traffic had already begun between Hartford 
and Springfield. Under these conditions the street was not laid out 
from house to house, but with a definite purpose independent of 
which future houses might be built on it.''' Its unique role as com- 
pared with other streets is shown, as in the case of the Connecticut 
River, by the use of the definite article : it is "the" Street of the 
towns through which it runs, even now. In East Hartford alone 
another street accompanies it on the first terrace, and this is easily 
explained by the fact that there alone the east bank had been found 
originally free from wood or brush and that therefore this region 
had been settled at about the same time as the western bank, and on 
the same plan. East Hartford is, therefore, the only town on the 
cast side whose oldest houses stand on the brow of the "meadow 
hill," and where the main street, following the gentle curves of the 
River, offers a variety of picturesque perspectives which all the 
imposing layout of "the" Street farther north is unable to give. 

In the New Haven Valley conditions were entirely different. 
The whole country was very low, the meadows were mostly tidal 
marshes. No large river had remodelled the glacial deposits, which, 
so near the ocean, had probably never been undisturbed long enough 
to develop anything like terraces. The only location with a future 
was on the coast, and thus New Haven was from the start predes- 
tined to a much more dominating position among the neighbouring 

* There is one instance on the west side, too, of a street existing prior to the settlement. This is 
SufTield, the original southwest corner of the town of Springfield. Of all towns bordering on the river 
Suffield is the only one which has no alluvial meadow land, owing to the fact that the underlying sand- 
stones crop out directly on the bank of the river, whose bed is here cut into bed rock, forming the Enfield 
Rapids or " Falls " on the other side. Lacking that which the early settlers prized most, this district 
remained a wilderness until quite late into the eighteenth century, in the midst of a thriving common- 
wealth, and it was known generally as the "country on the road to Northampton." But when the 
traffic with that town became more lively the advantage of a location on a main highway offered com- 
pensations for the lack of alluvial soil, and along the street, the then straight street, the village and 
later town sprang up. Its inhabitants soon found out, too, that the rich glacial soil was no less desir- 
able for agricultural purposes than the meadow land, and the town of commercial origin is indeed 
to-day one of the few which have preserved their rural character in spite of the industrial invasion of 
modern New England, thanks to its flourishing tobacco-fields. Fig. VII, whose outlines wfU also 
apply to any village on " the " Street on the east side, shows very clearly how far the configuration of 
a typical street settlement differs from that of one founded regardless of commercial considerations, such 
as the three original towns. 



14 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

towns than Hartford ever held in the Connecticut Colony. New- 
towns were founded, indeed, east, west, and north of the harbour 
town ; but their relation to New Haven was submission to a power- 
ful leader rather than a partnership of equals, as in the case of the 
"Towns upon the River." The founders of New Haven town found 
no meadow hill to build houses on ; the only somewhat healthy loca- 
tions for home-building were the little hills formed through the inter- 
section of the lowland by the small streams. One of these hillocks, 
between two creeks filled up since, was selected for the New Haven 
town plot, which was scientifically laid out into nine squares with 
all the rigid economy that the scarcity of space required, meadow 
lots being allotted away from the houses outside of the settlement 
proper (Fig. VHI). From this centre the town and later city spread 
out in all directions, so that its map has now a distinct star-like 
aspect, quite unlike the rather fan-shaped outlines of cities like Hart- 
ford or Springfield (Fig. IX). 

From these two nuclei of settlement a lively colonizing move- 
ment started about the middle of the seventeenth century — a move- 
ment which worked toward bringing the boundaries of the two 
nearer each other, without as yet establishing any direct contact. 
The River towns began to investigate what was back of the wilder- 
ness that enclosed them on the west ; the shore town pushed farther 
north. The former crossed the trap ranges and discovered another 
valley with a river and terraces similar to their own, though not so 
wide ; the latter discovered other habitable spots rising from out of 
the marshy lowland. Thus Windsor colonists crossed the mountains 
and founded Simsbury ; Hartford people, Farmington ; Wethersfield 
penetrated beyond the Rocky Hill into what is now Middletown, 
and beyond Cedar Mountain into Newington ; in the north, Spring- 
field, with the assistance of a considerable contingent of pioneers 
from her southern neighbours, laid the foundations of Westfield, 
Hadley, and Northampton. The geographic conditions of the 
daughter towns repeat those of their mothers: Middletown, North- 
ampton, and Westfield are terrace towns, Simbury and Farmington 
likewise nestle on a strip of high land "on the slope of the mountain 
between forest and meadow." The oft'spring of New Haven, on 
the other hand, Wallingford, is another example of a village laid out 
carefully on the limited space of a small elevation, in this case on one 
of the lower-sandstone ridges which crop out from under the 
marshes, along and across which the lines of the streets and house 
lots were drawn with the same mathematical accuracy with which 
the foundations of the mother town had been established. 



Valley Tocvns of Connecticut. 



\o 



T. 
"ts» S*ti)e»s. 

n from^-'R.. cord S 

)88a ° 







IJ, I 



> VV,n.>..|l 



JoKn P^net. on •-■ ' JJ ^ j -.. ^ .y 

•^l'n»3 K< TO. jS * f 7 t' . , 
.'T.i.^iial Bu^K ,'8 5 H R ^\ 

!)• 

£4«.«,J BM.rl'|Jt.n ft a.. II B. ^ 

Rjv PeUfUV Clover Jo u n, r w 
k. V JsKnVean^lft** 3o Jl.ao. Ww. 

Airjm Dibeio >8 a./l Aw. 



t)»aThcrna»H»*tVkl lis )4 



: 




Wv|). Roe 5o 8 



i? nc 



Spt met 5 I 




t- 








r-<. 


. Gt-.j/. Mo,t»p.i5 ( 


Tk 


... -, 


l.'.>l t, Ik t. S< ». v-.' 




«„»., 


4.J.S ,? i»>..>,B...» 


—,— 


rr7''3j 


,l.Ta 



Mgj Jehr\ P^ntKon . tc. a. 



'^•<^t>>Y W.W «. 






Ro«4 to Mxi. ifcia 3- K.at 



TiwlCtK, Mfcl; Sen. t-c 



.'*-».. « •,,, 



FIG. VII.— SUFFIELD, CONN. THE REL.-\TION OF HOUSE LOTS TO THE PRE-EXISTING STRKET. 



16 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

A political map of the colonies at the close of this first period of 
expansion would then show the following aspect: Two individual 
colonies, one with its centre of gravitation ou the Sound, the other 
in the meadow and terrace district of the Connecticut River and its 
tributaries. Both are enclosed between the uplands east and west, 
the former reaching north as far as Wallingford, the latter extend- 
ing south as far as Southington and Middletown. Between them 
was a low and swampy territory, uninviting for settlement, which 
formed a natural barrier between the two colonies on the area now 



iji J - ., 



NEW HAV 

' IK 



riG. VIII. — THE ORKilNAL TOWN LOT OF NEW HAVEN, CONN. 

covered by the towns of New Britain, Berlin, and Meriden (Fig. 
X). 

An outside impetus finally closed the gap between the two spheres 
of interest. In 1686, when the appearance of Governor Andros 
threatened the independence of the colonies, the court of Connecticut 
made a hasty grant to the existing towns of the hitherto unoccupied 
lands both on the western hills and between the colonies, to avoid 
being compelled to surrender them to Andros. The actual occupa- 



Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 



17 



tionof these grants well illustrates the difference between central 
and peripheral locations. It took over thirty years before the present 
towns of Litchfield, Ilarwinton, and New Hartford grew up on the 
outskirts of the Connecticut colony; while the border country at the 
foot of the Hanging Hills, in spite of all its objectionable features, 
soon began to feel the quickening influence of a location half-way 
between two thriving commonwealths. In addition to that, the 




1 Ui. IX. — MAP OK NEW HAVEN, SHOWING THE AVENl'ES RADIATING FKOM THE ORIGINAL CENTRE. 

greater advantages of through traffic made themselves felt, since 
New Amsterdam had become New York, and the need of an over- 
land connection between it and the other great centre of English 
colonization on the Bay had led to the establishing of a stage route 
between Boston and New York. Under such conditions it did not 
take long before the first houses of the present town of Meriden 



18 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

sprang up in the neighbourhood of a famous tavern which stood here 
for the accommodation of travellers between the two metropolises; 
and the development of this town is another instructive example of 
the influence of location. Both colonies took their share in it. It 
was founded under Connecticut jurisdiction and settled by Connecti- 
cut people from the adjacent towns. But it is the only instance of 
people from that State building, not a terrace town, but a hill town 
on the New Haven plan; for on this territory of New Haven-ish 
configuration their traditional method would- not work. Old Meri- 
den, like Old Wallingford, stands on a sandstone ledge rising from 
out of the lowland. Very soon even the political allegiance began 
to be felt as something incongruous with their environment. One 
after the other the freemen of Meriden began to petition to the 
court of Wallingford for admission as citizens of that town, so 
that before long the majority of the inhabitants of this Connecticut 
place were New Haveners politically. At last this discrepancy 
made the situation so untenable that the village as a whole went over 
to the other side as a New Haven town — one of the most striking 
instances of the attraction of geographical relationship working 
against arbitrary political conditions. The aspect of the present 
town line still reflects the uncertainty of conditions under which it 
was established (Fig. X). 

In the border district on the east the controversies about the State 
line had similar results. Along the escarpment of the upland, 
settlers from the River towns had reclaimed the territory of the 
towns of Somers, Vernon, Bolton, Tolland, Coventry, from the 
wilderness, but those adjoining Windsor were in a state of almost 
perpetual change between JMassachusetts and Connecticut jurisdic- 
tion. On the occasion of one of the many regulations of the State line, 
Windsor lost such a large part of its territory that it petitioned for 
a compensation. In compliance with this petition it was granted as 
an "equivalent" "all the vacant land between Windsor and Tolland, 
and the unoccupied territory north of Tolland." The former 
extended the boundary of the town considerably eastward; the 
latter was found, upon examination, to be just a small gore .of land 
extending from the town across the upland to the Willimantic River. 
This gore, which was popularly called the equivalent, afterwards 
went with the eastern ])art of the town when this was set ofif as a 
separate town by itself, and so the new town received a shape not 
unlike the letter L, from which even its name of Ellington is said to 
be derived (Fig. X). 

The land was now occupied all over. Its population increased 



Valley Tozciis of Connecticut. 



10 




HM 



mz^ 



SPR/A/eF/CLD 
W/NO^OR 

Hartford 
Wethersfi^ld 



TH£ AREA5 IN OPtN LINE5 
SHOIV THE ORIGINAL TER- 
RITORY OF EACH TOWN 

THE AREAS IN CLOSE LINES 
SHQVJ THE COLONIZED TER- 
RITORY OF EACH TOWN 



^m^y/l NEw Haven 



T THE ORIGINALLY UNCLUMED BORDER. REGION 
J BETWEEN THE TWO COLON lEsS. 



FIG. X. — HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE TOWNS. 



20 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

and spread more evenly over the whole territory of the towns in pro- 
portion as the wilderness lost its terrors. Tier after tier of lots 
was laid out farther and farther away from the River, and the inhabi- 
tants gradually began to realize the true extent of the territory, 
which, in spite of owning it so long, they had never really occupied. 
At this point of the development another geographical law began 
to work — the law that each political unit can grow only to a certain 
size, which must be in harmony with geographical postulates : if it 
exceeds this limit it will fall apart. It is the same law which 
worked against the permanent existence of empires like those of 
Charlemagne, of Napoleon the First, or the "holy" German-Roman 
empire of the Middle Ages : In their times the influence of space — 
sheer space — yet unconquered by steam or electricity, was a force 
which man could not overcome, and all these huge foundations 
tumbled over as soon as the sceptre of a mighty tyrant no longer 
held them forcefully together. Even this country would never have 
been able to remain one union had not its making coincided with 
the age of steam, for which the distance between the Atlantic and 
Pacific ceased to be an obstacle to communication. But in the 
early days of wiiich we speak here, with only most primitive methods 
of communication, space was the inexorable enemy of large political 
units. The Connecticut towns, when settled to their full extent, 
soon found out that they could not hold their own against it. Their 
territories were too large for the times, and consequently the same 
process of disintegration which destroyed the large empires set in 
here. Thus at the close of the eighteenth century another period 
of the foundation of new towns began, not by colonisation, however, 
but by segregation. The people of the peripheral parts of the towns 
found it inconvenient, and even impossible, to travel so far and so 
often as their duties at the town hall and meeting-house required. 
One after the other, therefore, the settlements in the outskirts of 
the towns petitioned to the Town court, at first, for "winter privi- 
leges" — viz., permission to have a pastor of their own during the 
part of the year when travelling caused the greatest hardship ; later, 
for permission to segregate from the town church altogether and 
constitute a permanent parish by themselves ; finally, for transforma- 
tion of the parish into a separate town. In this way Hartford fell 
apart into Hartford proper. West Hartford, and East Hartford, 
from which, again, Manchester is an offspring ; Bloomfield, Windsor 
Locks, Vernon, and East Windsor segregated from Windsor, and 
East Windsor had to give up Ellington and South" Windsor in its 
turn ; Glastonbury, Rocky Hill, and Newington were daughter towns 



Valley Tozcns of Connecticut. 21 

of Wethersfield ; Midcllefield, Cromwell, and Chatham, of Middle- 
town, and Portland in its turn of Chatham ; Simsbury lost Canton 
and Granby, and the latter, East Granby ; Farmington : Avon, Bristol, 
Plainville, and vSouthington ; where the three towns of Farmington, 
Aliddletown, and Wethersfield met, the settlers of this border region 
constituted themselves into a town of their own and called it Berlin ; 
in the north. West Springfield, Suffield, and Enfield were taken from 
Springfield, and Somers from Enfield; in the south. East Haven, 
North Haven, and Hampden from New Haven, and Cheshire and 
Meriden from Wallingford (Fig. X). The immediate motives of 
these separations varied in the various places. Sometimes, as in the 
case of South Windsor, the long distances within the town are 
expressly referred to as the cause of the desire for a division of the 
town. In other cases the same cause can be indirectly traced, 
because the large original territory of the town included districts 
of very different natural opportunities, from which a diversity of 
occupations, and consequently of interests, among their inhabitants 
resulted which it was next to impossible to represent in one town 
government. For such reasons industrial Plainville seceded from 
agricultural Farmington ; Windsor Locks, the manufacturing village 
on the Enfield Canal in the town of Windsor, from that town; in 
JNIassachusetts, Holyoke from West Springfield.* As a third group 
by themselves must finally be classed certain separations which 
were not due to any geographical influence — namely, those caused 
by religious dissensions among the members of a church, especially 
when that most prolific of all sources of New England church 
troubles, the location of a new meeting-house, was involved. Berlin 
and New Britain, where one church was successively removed to 
three different places according to the opinions of the party that 
happened to gain the upper hand in the controversy, are the classical 
cases of such emancipation from the mother church and town 
(Farmington). Granby, Canton, and East Granby present similar 
cases with regard to Simsbury ; West Springfield took its origin as 
the unruly daughter of the Springfield church. 

The whole territory being now divided up into a number of towns 
of fairly equal and manageable size, the nineteenth century found the 

* In some respects Holyoke is, perhaps more than any other Valley town, the product of its terraces, 
which have each been utilized for the building of a canal corresponding to the respective levels of the 
river above and below the falls (now the Dam). But the rapid growth of this ultra-modern busi- 
ness town (founded in 1S50) has not allowed the gradual occupation of the territory and the leisurely 
development of the residence districts. It is, therefore, the only terrace town in the Valley where 
straight streets and rectangular blocks dominate even on the highest terrace, a type perfectly out of 
harmony with the geographico-historical environment, due to artificial growth under a nineteenth-cen- 
tury boom, instead of gradual conquest of, and adaptation to, natural conditions (Fig. XI). 



22 



Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 



communities ready for the struggle for prominence, and soon the 
differences of their geographical conditions started among them a 
process of natural selection whose consequences have determined 
the present political geography of the country. In the century of 
steam and electricity there was, of course, no factor more potent in 
the determination of geographical values than the development of 
commerce and traffic, and a glance at the map of Connecticut will 
show that all towns and cities of any importance are found along 
the main lines of travel by rail or by water. The oldest of these 




AN EXCEPTION FROM THE 1 R ADITIUN A L TVlTi 
TEKRACE TOWN. 



lines, whose influence began to work at the earliest date, was the 
waterway on the River. On it there were the five towns of Spring- 
field, Windsor, Hartford, Wethersfield, and Middletown. From 
the very start Hartford enjoyed among them the invaluable advan- 
tage of a central location, which means that it was able to communi- 
cate with its neighbours in less time than any of the other four could 
with theirs, as illustrated in the diagram below. Supposing the five 
places S, Wi, H, We, M (Fig. XH), to be located on a line of traffic 
which, for the sake of convenience, may be represented as a mathe- 



Valley Toicns of Connecticut. 23 

matically straight line with equal distances between the five points, 
and, counting the distance units between each two places, the 
peripheral location will, in the case of S, necessitate a trip of one 
unit to reach IVi, of two to H, of three to We, of four to M, and 
in the case of M, of one to JVe, of two to H, of three to Wi, of 
four to S; in all, both of the peripheral places will have to provide 
for a trip of ten units in order to communicate with all their neigh- 
bours. The semi-peripheral JVi and We are better off already. 
They can each reach two of their neighbours by means of one unit, 
the next by two units, the last by three — total, seven units to reach 
the same number of four towns. But H, thanks to its central loca- 






I 



V ■ 01 ... 1 "■-- -J- ' ' ,-- Vs-«\.f 



S., W.^ iU We , ,3 



l^ext to \->^t<i'p^i.ra.i. 



1 ' S. , H ^ ',,. _,H ^ J^^. 



..^ ^ .M-H . t 

- - _i -tr-j:-'--- + 1 v\- W,- . i 

S : f 

w.- ^ • * 












7 






-W, = i 



H- W. 



Centra? location. S % IL ^ 5J!t i^ 

---2 -- ♦ ^-'- |h-s 

FIG. XII. — DI.\GRAMS ILLUSTR.\TING COMMERCIAL OPPORTUNITIES OF REL.\TIVE LOCATION. 

tion, needs one unit only to reach JJl and JFe, and two to reach 5^ and 
M — total, six units, in comparison with the seven of IVi and We, 
and the ten of 6" and M. Both Springfield and Middletown, con- 
trolling the valley from one side only, were, therefore, from the 
start at disadvantage in the competition with the other towns whose 
opportunities upstream and downstream were nearly or entirely 
alike. In addition to this one-sided position with regard to the valley 
towns, Springfield was further handicapped by its location above the 
last rapids of the River, over which vessels were able to go only 
under exceptionally favourable circumstances, so that in the very 
infancy of the colony a warehouse had been built at the foot of the 
"Falls" to store goods for re-shipping from the large river boats to 
the small sloops that could be towed upstream, or in many cases 
for land-transportation to Springfield by way of "the" Street. This 



24 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

was an obstacle which practically cut the city off from a large terri- 
tory which she might otherwise have controlled; and even the con- 
struction of a canal around the Falls could not entirely overcome it. 
The political separation from the towns below as created through the 
unnatural course of the State line mentioned before gave additional 
weight to it, and thus Springfield interests and activities gradually 
confined themselves more and more to its neighbours on the north, 
where she soon secured the leadership which it was impossible for 
her to acquire among Connecticut towns. 

But for Middletown there was no such compensation. To the dis- 
advantage of its general position in regard to the Valley Towns was 
added the detriment of a hinterland practically without any settlers 
or commercial attractions. Back of the town extended, to the south 
and east, the uninhabited upland ; to the west, the swamps of the 
border region between the two colonies. It was, in fact, cut off 
from the rest of the world save for the one way of access and 
egress — the River, which, as has been shown above, was only of 
limited commercial value below the meadow districts. Quarrying 
and fisheries were, therefore, the principal resources of the town 
for many years ; and even in our times, that have given it better 
opportunities through the development of railroads and manufac- 
tures, the nickname of the "graveyard of Connecticut" has not quite 
lost its meaning. 

Thus the race for prominence on the River was narrowed down 
to the three sister towns of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, 
and it was now Windsor and Wethersfield that held a peripheral 
location in comparison with Hartford, presenting an example of 
Hahn's law hardly less illustrative than the famous case of Bremen, 
Hamburg, and Liibeck. At first, indeed, it seemed as if Windsor 
had the brightest prospects, having become, with the increasing 
draught of vessels, the head of navigation on the River. But, 
unfortunately, the process did not stop there, and when vessels went 
on increasing, the head of navigation again moved downstream. 
Hartford was in possession of a topographical advantage unequalled 
for miles up and down stream — namely, on its territory the first ter- 
race extends directly down to the river, forming a bluff overhang- 
ing the water that affords a safe landing at all seasons (Fig. XHI). 
To be sure, a ledge of rock at Rocky Hill in the town of Wethers- 
field might have oft'ered similar facilities ; but this landing was away 
from the centre of the town, which was, in its turn, separated from 
the River by many acres of meadowland adjoining shallow water on 
a sMfting reach of the same; while at Hartford the terrace back of 



Valley Towns of Connecticut. 



25 



the bluff was the site of the business centre of the city. In this 
way the advantages of location and topography co-operated in secur- 
ing for Hartford a commanding position in the Valley, and the fore- 
sight of her people further improved upon them by the construction 
of a bridge across the River, which attracted to the city the through 
traffic from the east and west. Having thus become the junction of 
the overland route and water transportation, Hartford's opportuni- 
ties for controlling the surrounding country were practically 
unlimited; they were so great that even the efforts of a clique of 




riC. XIIl. — THE IlI-UI'I" AT IIAKTl'OUD, CONN. 



citizens who, for social reasons, tried to keep the city within the size 
of a quiet country town, could not prevent it from becoming one of 
the most thriving factory and commercial cities of New England. 

In proportion as the advantages of easy communication in all 
directions were felt in this part of the valley. New Haven began to 
realize more and more keenly the disadvantages of her seclusion 
from the hinterland, and began to consider ways and means how to 
overcome them. The opening up of the riverless valley to the north 
seemed the most urgent problem, and, with the example of the 



26 Valley Tozuiis of Connecticut. 

stimulating influence of the Erie Canal on the growth of New York 
before their eyes, the merchants of New Haven found the solution 
of the problem in the reconstruction of the waterway of which the 
irresponsibility of glacial action had deprived their town. A canal 
was built from New Haven to Northampton, but it did not fulfill the 
expectations which had caused its construction. Not only did the 
elements conspire against it in that loose glacial soil, so that it was a 
source of annoyance and expense rather than of profit for the town, 
but the times of the predominant importance of waterways were 
already waning in this part of the country, and not before the canal 
was succeeded by a railroad did New Haven derive any benefit 
worth mentioning from the new line of traffic. Nor was it an unmiti- 
gated blessing for the towns in the Farmington Valley which it con- 
nected. To be sure, it furnished them with both water-power for 
industries and a line of transportation for the products of the same : 
but following, as a canal must, the line of lowest depression along 
the valley, it upset all the geographical values of that part of the 
country. The location in the meadow now became the only one with 
a future ; a migration of the population from the hillside to the 
meadows was the consequence of this readjustment of values. 
Industrial villages dependent on the railroad sprang up along it 
almost overnight, and the historic settlements on the meadow hill 
were left out in the cold. Thus old Farmington, whose commerce 
once competed with that of Hartford, was reduced to the rank of a 
suburban summering place of that city, while the young settlement 
of Plainville grew up in the meadow at its expense. Plantsville in 
Southington, Weatogue and Tarififville in Simsbury, Forestville in 
Bristol, Augerville and Centerville in Hamden, likewise outstripped 
the original settlements. When the railroad replaced the canal it 
only accelerated the process ; for it killed highway travel, wdiich had 
until then been the last standby of the old towns, and it created new 
competitors at their outskirts by sending out branch lines toward 
the upland, where, along the fall line, water-power,' independent of 
any canal, caused the rise of other prospering factory villages 
(Collinsville, Unionville). To towns deprived of such natural 
advantages, which had no industries but only farming to fall back 
upon, the railroad proved a Grecian gift indeed, because it carried 
business past them rather than to them. xA-von, for instance, which 
had been incorporated from Farmington as a separate town during 
the canal boom, and was, at that time, located at the crossing of the 
canal and the Albany turnpike with three flourishing hotels and every 
promise of becoming an important centre of traffic, is to-day nothing 



Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 



27 



but a sleepy farming community — a more pronounced, but less poetic, 
repetition of the fate of Farmington. 

Similar changes have taken place along the main line, of course. 




FIG. XIV.— IRINCIl'AL KAILROADS OK IHE tONNECTICLT VALLEV. 

A glance at the map of Connecticut shows that the present impor- 
tance of a town depends mostly, if not exclusively, on its position with 



28 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

regard to the principal railroad (Fig. XIV). No railroad, no busi- 
ness ; no business, no growth. The three largest cities have developed 
where the New Haven-Springfield trunk line connects with the lines 
from the Hudson to the Bay : New Haven, between Boston and New 
York, has the Shore and Air Lines ; Hartford, between Boston and 
the Poughkeepsie Bridge, has the Central New England and High- 
land Divisions ; Springfield, between Boston and Albany, has the rail- 
road of that name. Where lines of secondary importance intersect 
the main line, towns and cities of lesser size, though still consider- 
ably larger than their less-favoured neighbours, have sprung into 
prominence : Meriden, Berlin, and New Britain at and near the junc- 
tions of the Waterbury-Middletown and Waterbury-Hartford lines 
with the trunk line, Middletown at that of the Waterbury, Valley 
Division, and Air Lines. 

The consequences of the adjustment to the changed conditions 
have, however, been, on the whole, less revolutionary here than on 
the Canal Road, because the railroad does not naturally seek the line 
of lowest depression, but, like the highway, prefers a little higher and 
drier ground as long as it can proceed there without too much change 
of grade. Here, therefore, where no previous canal works had to be 
utilized in its layout, the distance between it and the original settle- 
ments was not so large as to practically deprive them of its blessings, 
the difficulty could be overcome by a gradual adjustment to the new 
conditions. The towns in the New Haven Valley simply grew 
downhill from their original centres to reach the railroad ; and though 
this process caused some disturbance in real-estate values, it did not 
do the towns any permanent harm. Thus the traveller sees, at the 
Wallingford depot, a straight street of modern houses leading from 
the unsightly environment of his stopping-place to the hill about a 
mile away, where the stately old houses of the town proper welcome 
him. Meriden has, in a similar way, come down from its sandstone 
ledge and established a new business centre near the railroad in a 
quarter which, under the old name of Dogs' Misery, had formerly 
been considered entirely unfit for human beings to live in. At Hart- 
ford, the State capitol has migrated from the terrace overlooking 
the River to a hill overlooking the railroad — a location which was 
considered suburban in the old times, and the business centre like- 
wise now extends railroadward, so to speak, instead of riverward, 
from the centre of the city. 

The towns between Hartford and the Falls have needed the least 
adjustment, because the railroad, which reaches the River at Hart- 
ford, proceeds thence on the first terrace, in order to keep out of 



Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 29 

clanger from the freshets. Consequently, it runs here close by the old 
settlements, and its only effect has been the change in the character 
of the parts of the towns through which it passes. The old homes 
of the aristocrats of the towns on this terrace have sadly deterio- 
rated under the influence of the inhabitants which the new mode of 
transportation has brought to them. On the eastern bank of the 
River, however, where the original town centres were built on the 
second terrace, the case of Farmington is repeated, the depot being 
so far away from the town proper that young settlements have grown 
up around it which have every promise of soon outstripping the 
mother settlement, if they have not already done so: in South 
Windsor, the place where the old warehouse stood is, under the 
name of Warehouse Point, fast being transformed into a lively 
village ; in Enfield, Thompsonville is a hustling industrial centre, and 
in Longmeadow, which has not yet developed a railroad colony, the 
depot stands, as in Farmington, at such distance from human habita- 
tions that a stranger, upon arriving there, may for the first few 
moments believe himself mystified by the conductor. 

Hand in hand with this influence of the railroad one of a different 
nature worked toward the reconstruction of geographical values — 
namely, the decline of the agricultural industries of the East in pro- 
portion as the resources of the West developed. The soil of the 
Valley could no longer support the increasing population ; they had 
to fall back on other means of subsistence. In most cases, manufac- 
turing was the only one available, and this brought into prominence 
a location which had never been a favoured one before — that of 
the fall line on the borders of the former "wilderness." The pro- 
cess has already been touched upon in speaking of the after-canal- 
boom period in the western valley, in the cases of Collinsville and 
Unionville, to which later Bristol was added. It is even more pro- 
nounced on the east side. The city of Rockville, in the town of 
Vernon, is perhaps the most striking example. Others are the 
villages of Talcottville, in the same town ; Somerville, in Somers ; 
Hazardville, in Enfield; South Manchester, in Manchester; South 
Glastonbury, in Glastonbury. Secondary railroads provide for 
the transportation of their products to the two nearest commercial 
centres — Hartford and Springfield. The only places which have 
been able to hold their own without giving up their rural character 
are the fortunate towns on the alluvial soil of what was once the 
"meadow," which are as prosperous on the culture of tobacco as the 
others are on the output of their mills. 

The latest stage in this modernisation of the geographical aspects 



30 Valley Tozviis of Connecticut. 

of the Valley is just beginning; under the influence of the improved 
methods of communication and of the increasing community of 
interests caused by the uniformity of business in the neighbouring 
towns, the town boundaries as established during the process of 
segregation of the last century are rapidly becoming too narrow. 
One large community has, in the present, ever so much better 
chances of success than a couple of small ones ; and it seems as if in 
the course of the coming century a process of reconsolidation of the 
present towns to more or less the size of the original ones, or an 
absorption of the lesser ones by the large centres, would be the most 
important geographical event. The possibility of a union of Hart- 
ford with West and East Hartford has already been repeatedly dis- 
cussed — it is certainly not a purely theoretical discussion, and others 
will probably follow. The tendency is toward the creation of a few 
large centres between which the remnants of the old times, which 
have little or no manufacturing opportunities, will be left over for 
the lovers and seekers of rest from the busy centres, such as 
Wethersfield, Farmington, Newington, etc. 

In the locations of the centres both old and new conditions will 
combine. The towns of the Farmington Valley will probably never 
occupy a leading position, because no one of them is geographically 
so much better endowed than her neighbours as to justify her lord- 
ing it over them. Moreover, that valley is too narrow to afford 
space for any one of them to grow or consolidate to a considerable 
size, and, finally, their connections with the world markets are only 
of secondary importance. In the New Haven Valley, on the con- 
trary, the advantages of New Haven are still so overwhelming that 
she will most likely always remain the one mistress of that region, 
as she has been in tlie past. Of the Valley Towns proper the glory 
of Windsor and Wethersfield is a thing of the past, and is reasonably 
certain to remain so; for as way stations only, not crossings", of the 
lines of traffic, they will always be at disadvantage with the other 
three. Windsor is a little better off than Wethersfield, because it is 
traversed at least by the trunk line, which is quite a compensation for 
the loss of the navigation business, and renders possible the existence 
of a few industries which contribute to the prosperity of the town. 
Wethersfield has, indeed, the water route at her disposal to this 
day ; but this route has ceased to be what it was in the old times, as 
is best shown by the fact that it has been duplicated by a railroad. 
But this railroad has not given the town larger possibilities, touching 
no place at which the steamers do not call also ; and for more than 
local purposes is almost of less value than the latter, which at least 



Valley Tozciis of Connecticut. 31 

reach New York directly, while the railroad, ceasing at the coast 
where there is no harbour, leads practically nowhere. In spite of 
its glorious past, Wethersfield is therefore becoming more and more 
a residential suburb and market garden for the sister city to the 
north. 

Among the three centres which control crossings of the roads, 
JMiddletown occupies a position by herself. In spite of being a junc- 
tion, she will never reap the full benefit of this location before a 
better development of her hinterland has transformed her peripheral 
location into a more central one, which is certainly not a matter of 
the near future. To be sure, the upland is no longer an unsettled 
wilderness; but in comparison with the business done in the Valley 
it is perfectly stagnant, and Middletown is actually located at the 
outskirts of the business world. 

This leaves Springfield, Hartford, and New Haven as the close 
competitors for supremacy in the future. x'Vt present New Haven 
still leads; but it is the question whether this will always be so. 
The effects of peripheral and central location cannot fail to appear 
in the future development of these three, as they have among others. 
The advantage of being a seaport, which has been the basis of New 
Haven's local importance, is rapidly declining, now that the control 
of larger territories is involved. If we draw a circle of so many- 
miles diameter around, say, Hartford or Springfield to designate the 
respective spheres of influence of these towns, and then another of 
the same size with New Haven as the centre, half of the latter circle 
will be water. In this age of world-wide commercial relations a 
seaport can have a more than local importance only if the water half 
of this circle covers a whole ocean, to which a land half of continental 
size corresponds, as in the case of our great Atlantic and Pacific ports. 
If even these ports begin to feel the competition of the large inland 
centres, of which the rivalry between New York and Chicago is the 
most striking, but by far not the only, example, what are the pro- 
spects of small ports like New Haven, on an inland sea, and with but 
a limited hinterland? The days of their exclusive maritime charac- 
ter and glory are over, and, like the rural towns, they must fall 
back on other resources to supplement the losses incurred by the 
decline of the importance of their shipping interests. New Haven 
has already done so, and is, indeed, to-day quite as much a manu- 
facturing city as a seaport. But this change of conditions has 
altered her relative position to the other towns. It is no longer a 
case of competition between the quiet farming communities and the 
hustling seaport, but of manufacturing city versus manufacturing 



33 Valley Tozvns of Connecticut. 

city — that is, a race among equals, in which the best equipped will 
win, and New Haven's coastal location, once the foundation of its 
greatness, may very likely become its stumbling-block now. 

Springfield and Hartford have the same overland connections as 
New Haven, and each of them is located, not at the periphery, but 
right in the heart of one of the most prosperous regions of New 
England, whose business it attracts and controls by innumerable 
secondary lines of traffic, steam and electric, which, like the arms of 
a huge octopus, bring to the centre anything which comes within its 
reach. In addition to these advantages, which both cities on the 
River have in common, Hartford has the unique advantage of a loca- 
tion at the now permanent head of navigation, at the transfer point 
of all merchandise from the water route to land transportation. 
Under such circumstances, the present outlook is strongly in favour 
of a final supremacy of this city. Already she has secured the dis- 
tinction of being the only capital of the State, to the detriment of 
New Haven. It will be interesting to watch whether further 
development will justify these expectations, or whether new and 
unexpected conditions will turn up and once more transform all the 
geographical values, as has so often been the case in the past. 



i 






^^•^^, 






H^o' 



o > 



;^, 









V 




• 


"•^^ 


0^ 




* 


y 


^x. 








o 



-V =■ ,0 ^_j_ 



"^^ 

*?', 









♦ o ^ 




. DOBBSBROS. 

>t >» LIBRARY BINDING 

,', ST. AUGUSTINE 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



014 075 871 1 



